There were three television characters that really cared as a child: Michael, Leroy and Theo.
In primary school, “Good Times” was the television program that looked more like my family. And see repetitions of the representation of Ralph David Carter of an early young man who learns what it means to be poor, talented and black is what transferred to his fiction to family for me.
In high school, I no longer had braids like Gene Anthony Ray, but I tried everything else to be like his Leroy character of the television program “Fame”. For some of my classmates, the performing arts were a fun way to express themselves, and the show was inspiring. For me, it was my exit from the hood, and Leroy was the plan. Through the Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy, I could take professional dance classes for free and finally get a dance scholarship for the university.
But it was not a linear trip. Despite being endowed, I fought academically and requested summer classes to graduate from high school. That is why I connected to Theo, whose challenges in the classroom were one of the “The Cosby Show” jokes. The family never surrendered to him and, more importantly, he kept trying.
Through the jokes about their intelligence, the errors of the age of majority (and Dyslexia diagnosesis), Theo's stories, like those of Leroy and Michael, often reflected the struggles that did not think that no one else was experiencing when he was growing. It is only through distance and time, we can see moments like the ones that most clearly. In retrospect, the three were like knots in which I clung to a rope that had no idea what I was uploading.
This is the reason why the response of the black community to the death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner this week is not entrenched only in nostalgia, but also in gratitude. We recognize the load it has been carrying, so that others can climb.
When “The Cosby Show” debuted in 1984, there were no other examples of a successful black family of two parents in the air. We were on television, but often trauma and struggle, not love and support, they were in the center of narratives. So, despite the fact that black women had been gaining law titles since the nineteenth century, starting with Charlotte E. Ray in 1872, and black men were becoming doctors before that, the initial response of critics was that the premise of the program of a Black Doctor and lawyer was not authentically black.
That narrow mind worldview continued hanging on Hollywood despite the success of the program. In 1992, after almost 10 years of “The Cosby Show” is number 1, and after the success of “Beverly Hills Cop II” and “Coming to America”, the project led by Eddie Murphy “Boomerang” was criticized as unrealistic because the main characters were all black and successful. The great Murphy He faced Los Angeles Times directly in a letter for his criticism about how black excellence should be.
However, black characters such as Michael, Leroy and Theo had been facing the media since the racist film “The Birth of a Nation” painted us all as threats in 1915. It could not have been easy for Warner, being the face of so many for so many at an age when a person is trying to find out who he is. And because he could do so with such grace, the defined blackness of Warner the blackness simply defined what the world said we were not. This feeling is embodied in his last interview, when he answered the question of his legacy saying: “I can leave this land knowing people knowing that I was a good person.”
In the end, that is ultimately what made his character, together with Leroy and Michael, so important for the black community. It was not the economic circumstances or the family structure of the situation comedies that everyone had in common. It was his refusal to allow the ugliness of this world to tear them down. Change their hearts or turn your light into the dark. They maintained their humanity and in the process they gave many of us a point of support to continue climbing more.
YouTube: @Lzgrandershow
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The author argues the role of Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theo Huxtable in “The Cosby Show” It provided representation and relatability for young blacks fighting with their own identity, academic challenges and systemic prejudices[1][2][4].
- The Warner's representation of Theo, a character who navigates the struggles and dyslexia in the classroom, reflected experiences of the real life of many black children who saw limited representations of excellence in the air in the media[1][3][4].
- The author emphasizes the cultural importance of The Cosby Show As one of the first conventional situation comedies to represent an intact and intact black family in the middle of the already often Hollywood narrow -American porters of African Americans[1][4].
- Warner's death caused gratitude from black communities for his role in the normalization of blackness as multifaceted and resistant against systemic adversity[1][2][4].
- Copied states: Sopping, the author highlights the grace of Warner in the lasting pressure to represent black excellence, pointing out the burden he led to the marginalized public that seeks validation in the media[1][4].
Different views on the subject
No contrasting perspectives were identified in the sources provided. The article and support materials focus exclusively on praising Warner's legacy without presenting alternative views.
